“Tsigana.” He watched her as he spoke the name. But she could see no trace of emotion.
“Did you?”
“Perhaps. Oh, I killed him. Perhaps it was insanity—certainly I can’t justify it. And some of it was about Tsigana.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath, but she had nothing to lose. “Is that why she betrayed you?”
His lips twisted. “No. She betrayed me because I wouldn’t give her what she sought—eternal life.”
“She wanted you to make her a vampire?”
“She loved power, poor Tsigana. It was what drew her to me. But when you can see power without touching it, it’s no longer enough. She wanted more. I refused it, and Maximilian promised it. The rest was inevitable. Although it must be said the last laugh is mine. Maximilian never gave her the promised gift. She died a very old woman, I understand.”
It might have given him satisfaction. It was hard to tell. He was gazing into his wine, the half smile not fading on his full, sensual lips.
“Didn’t you know?” Elizabeth blurted. “Didn’t you suspect they were betraying you?”
“I should have,” he agreed. “I knew them both—knew them all—well enough. I suppose it must have been the insanity you spoke of.” He lifted the glass to his lips and drank, as if that would hide the old, ugly wounds. But the softness of tragedy stayed in his black, not-so-expressionless eyes.
The knowledge rushed on her like a revelation, peculiarly devastating. Not insanity. Just simple love.
He lowered the glass and caught her staring. He laughed. “What’s the matter? You think me incapable of love because I’m evil?”
“Are you?”
“Incapable of love? Come here and I’ll show you.”
“Evil,” she said firmly.
“Like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder.”
It was so easy to drown in his eyes, in his darkness. To lose the fraying thread that bound her to reality—just.
“You really want to rule the world? Like some insane megalomaniac from an old B movie?”
The gleam was back in his eyes—mockery or lust. Or both. “It’s a long-term goal. Just now, all I want is to make love to you.”
Her stomach lurched downward. “Oh no. I know what comes after that.”
“It’s a long time until sunrise.”
They were bantering, flirting over her life. She should have been appalled. She should have been running like hell, whatever the futility. Was she so pathetic that she would just lie down and die for him?
Face it, Silk. It’s not the dying you want. It’s the loving.
Reaching out, he stroked her hair, brushing the tousled locks behind her bare shoulder. She might have been mistaken, but she imagined his hand shook. His touch on her skin was soft, sensual, unbearably tender. His compelling eyes burned.
He ached—as she did.
Her breath caught. The game wasn’t over. She had one last throw, if she dared to take it.
She leaned into him and lifted her face closer to his. He inhaled her, not smiling now, but savoring. His lips parted, but still they didn’t take hers. His only contact was the hand lying still and heavy on her shoulder.
God help me. . . .
Her heart pounded at the enormity of what she was about to do. She closed her eyes, gathering courage and strength, and brushed her lips across his. When they moved in instant response, she flicked her tongue along his upper lip, from corner to corner, then snaked inside his mouth, and fastened her whole mouth to his.
His arms came around her, not crushing but cradling, letting her kiss, letting her arms creep around his neck until her fingers could tangle in his long, soft hair. His mouth moved over hers, his tongue stroking hers without hurry. There was none of the hot urgency of the encounter at the Angel, and she was grateful, because right now she couldn’t deal with that. This was a slow burn, though no less intense, no less pleasurable.
It was her hands that strayed first, stroking down the vertebrae of his back and under the waistband of his trousers. His skin was cool and soft, but he didn’t stay still under her fingers. It was as if his body stroked them back. She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t pushed down further over the taut swell of his buttocks.
The movement of his body against her became more pro - nounced and far more suggestive, rubbing his chest against her breasts until the slow burn she’d been imagining suddenly ran away with her. When he slid his fingers under the thin straps of her dress and let them fall down her arms, her mouth opened wide in a gasp of need.
He seized the opportunity, plundering with insistent tongue and sensual lips, and sharp, wicked teeth that sent flames of desire curling through her with every graze and caress. The feel of them, the knowledge of what he was, should have doused her lust in abject terror. Instead, it released a flood of sexual moisture between her thighs, the danger urging her on to lick one of those fangs, to take it between her lips and suck.
She gave a small, inarticulate moan, and he caught her hair in his hand, drawing her back so that he could look at her. Her breasts heaved as if she’d won the hundred-meter sprint, causing her dress to fall lower with every frantic breath. Under his avid gaze, her body burned yet glowed, as if his eyes caressed her.
He reached out and tugged her dress by the neck, fully exposing her breasts at last. She didn’t look. She knew her aching nipples stood out, begging. He looked for a long time, so long that she began to despair that he was changing his mind. He didn’t breathe, let alone pant, to give her a clue as to his feelings. She had only his dark, devouring eyes. Tiny flames seemed to dance there, gold and amber . . . but it might have been the candlelight.
Saloman bent his head. At the same time, his hand in her hair drew her back against the cushion, and he took her nipple between his lips.
Her eyes closed as she tried to absorb the sensations that grew sharper, more intense with every pull of his sensual lips, every flicker of his tongue. His hand slid up her thigh, over the crumpled piece of fabric that was her dress, and settled on the breast not occupied by his mouth. He caressed it softly with his palm, cupped it, rolled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. When a moan escaped her, he smiled around her breast and lifted his head to kiss her mouth instead while his hand continued its work.
Elizabeth was lost. Her upper body aflame with his attentions, the lower clamored for release. She arched her hips, seeking his touch, seeking comfort for the throbbing need of her sex. She found his hand. Firm and wicked, it pressed her down onto the sofa, making her whole body shriek with pleasure. His palm cupped her pubic bone, his fingers moved over the dampness of her panties, discovering her swollen clitoris with ease. He stroked it through the soaked cotton, and she gasped and whimpered, kissing him with hard, hot passion that was at least half a silent plea.
His fingers drew together, gathering the wisps of cotton into her sensitive folds until the panties began to slide down her hips and thighs and he could pull them off.
“I foresee a night of great pleasure,” he whispered. “Come.”
Straightening, he rose to his feet and took both her hands to help her follow. As she stood, conscious only of desire and need, the provocative dress fell the rest of the way to the floor, leaving her naked.
The vampire’s clouded eyes stared. He lifted her hands to his lips in turn, almost like an act of worship that induced a new wonder in her. Then he began to walk, conducting her with peculiar, courtly grace to an inner door she hadn’t noticed before. Mesmerized, she gazed at him as she walked naked beside him, through the doorway, into another large, luxurious room that contained first and foremost, a large, ornately carved four-poster bed, with heavy, partly drawn curtains that matched those at the windows of both rooms. Between them, she glimpsed pristine white sheets. They shone like silk.
Elizabeth heard her heart hammering. Fear rushed in on her at last, not because of what she was doing, but because of whom she was doing it with and because of how completely she had
surrendered. There was no going back, but she so needed to keep herself together, to be aware of more than his beauty and her own lust. . . .
As if he felt her sudden tension, he halted beside the bed and kissed her mouth, melting her, drugging her with irresistible desire. He gathered her close into his arms, drawing the length of her naked body against his clothed one, and God, that was sexy too, from the buttons of his shirt pressing into her nipples, to the hard column of his straining erection grinding against her abdomen. She was falling again, losing herself again. Her stomach soared as he lifted her in his arms, still kissing.
And because she wanted to, she tugged at his shirt, pulling it free of his trousers with one hand, trying to unfasten his buttons with the other. It was a desperate bid for control—her desire, not his—but as he laid her on the bed and simply tore open his shirt, letting the buttons spill all over the floor, such trivia vanished. There was just one desire. And it had her reaching for him with both hands, desperate to feel that pale gold skin against her own.
He was magnificent, as she’d known he would be. Toned muscle rippled in his upper arms, across his broad shoulders. A dusting of black hair scattered across his powerful chest, narrowing to a fine line down his flat stomach, like an arrow pointing into the waistband of his trousers, which he began to unfasten.
From Elizabeth’s admittedly limited experience, there should have been an undignified hopping and struggling to get them off, to get rid of his pants and socks. By rights, he should at least have sat on the bed to avoid it. But he didn’t deprive her of the full sight of his gradually revealed body, even for a moment. Any underwear was pushed down with his trousers, letting his breathtaking erection spring free over his taut stomach.
Her attention glued to this stunning organ, she missed how he extracted himself from the trousers and shoes. She lifted her gaze only when he stepped forward and sank rather than climbed onto the bed.
She opened her mouth to speak, to say what she didn’t know, and in any case it didn’t matter, for he pressed her into the pillows and kissed her until the world was dark and swirling and beautiful. And that alabaster skin was under her hands, cool and smooth as she ran them up and down the length of his lean, gorgeous back, feeling the muscles undulate to her caresses.
Beneath her was the luxurious softness of silken sheets; above her, the electrifying hardness of his chest and hips and thighs as he loomed over her, covering her body. His tender mouth and hands melted her.
“In my life,” he said, between kisses, “I have known many women, many loves.”
Something close to jealousy twisted through her, not dousing but fanning her urgency. She writhed under him, tried to hold on to his mouth, desperate to silence him, to bury her upsurge of inadequacy in the intensity of his lust.
His hands were in her hair, holding her twisting head steady for his dark gaze to bore into her. “Each is different; each is sweet, whether it lasts a decade or an instant.” His knee slid upward, parting her thighs farther, and she moaned aloud at the feel of his shaft sliding along her sex. “And if I have learned anything over the millennia, it is this: that in love, only the moment matters.”
The head of his organ nudged her entrance. He kissed her mouth, long and sensually. “For this moment, this night, Elizabeth, I love you.”
Her mouth opened wide in some soundless emotion, a sob that never came, for he entered her body in one firm, sliding push. Everything fled before the sensation, except the knowledge that she was now having sex with the most powerful vampire of all time. He let out a sound like a groan, which might have been a sigh in anyone else, and thrust farther in. Without conscious volition, she arched to meet him and gasped. Fully sheathed in her, he felt huge, filling and stretching her to her limit. And yet it was so good. No one else had ever felt like this inside her.
No one had ever moved inside her as he did either, slow and sensual, making love with his whole body, not just his cock. His back, his hips, undulated under her caressing hands, pushing into her as he bent to kiss her breasts. He reached deep inside her, finding places she hadn’t been aware of possessing, places that glowed under his stroking and caught fire, filling her with wonder and desire for more. She met his rhythm, squeezed him, and cried out with the delight it brought. She wrapped her legs around his hips, drawing him closer and deeper.
“I’ll pleasure you any and every way you want it,” he whispered. “But the first time has to be like this, inside you.”
“Why?”
“So that I can feel your joy at the source of mine. Because I find it sweetest. Because I want it. Because right now it feels as if I waited three hundred and twelve years and nine days for you, for this.”
On the last word, he thrust hard and powerfully, and she cried out at the wild pleasure. Twisting under him, kneading the taut swell of his buttocks in her hands, she tried to make him do it again; she sensed the shadow of care and self-control he tried to keep and with her sudden, dangerous need to make him lose it, another game had begun. A game that was sweet and exciting and one she couldn’t lose. At her urging, his strokes grew in strength and speed, shattering her with every thrust, building the fire that would consume her in seconds.
“You see?” he whispered, feeding the rising tide of her orgasm. “This is what you need, the thrill, the love. . . .” He kissed her mouth, driving into her, then dragged his lips across her jaw to her throat, and as the climax broke over her, he thrust again, intensifying it impossibly while sucking the skin of her throat into his mouth.
In that blinding instant, she knew that if she could survive by banishing this orgasm, she wouldn’t do it.
He was right. This moment was worth everything. It was life.
Then all thought, coherent or otherwise, vanished into the massive, convulsive joy. Through it, as if from a great distance, she heard his rising groan expand until it became a shout, a howl that rang in her ears and vibrated through her spasming body, along with his final, almost brutal thrusts that set it all off again.
His teeth scraped along her throat, seemed to tremble against her. She had a moment to anticipate the cold, numbing pleasure she’d felt a lifetime ago when he drew her blood into his mouth, to wonder with black, terrible excitement what added pleasure it would give to her orgasming body. And then his mouth dragged free. He reared up over her, taking his weight on his hands, his howl becoming a shout of raw, primal triumph.
Elizabeth had never seen anything more beautiful than this being’s joy in her. The force of it shook him, contorted his body, and added a powerful intensity to his handsome face, at once focused and lost. That moment—a very long moment—of unexpected vulnerability totally disarmed her.
His arms collapsed, his weight crushed her, and his mouth took hers again in a massive, devouring kiss. She clung to him as the storm subsided. And the truth struggled up into her stunned consciousness.
She’d won.
He’d taken her body, but left her blood.
She’d won.
Chapter Twelve
Saloman left her mouth at last, more to let her breathe than because he was finished with it. Blood still pounded through her, hot and sweet and alluring. Her heart and lungs pumped like pistons. But apart from her arms, which still clung around his neck, the rest of her body sagged, lethargic, almost limp under his weight. He let her bear it a little longer, because she could; because he liked it. After those days and nights of pursuit and teasing, of verbal struggles and all her determined efforts to kill him, it felt good to have her helpless and sated under him.
And in truth it felt good to gaze down at her soft, satisfied face, her eyes still closed, her swollen lips parted and glistening. Her delicate cheeks were rosy in the candlelight, flushed still with passion and exertion, her hair tumbling and tangled across the pillow.
Beauty moved Saloman. Watching Elizabeth slip from ecstasy to sleep made him ache. Perhaps it was release, after three centuries of enforced celibacy followed by nine agonizing days of
self-imposed abstinence. And of course, anticipation always intensified the pleasure. Whatever the cause, this was one of those rare couplings that touched his soul.
Physical beauty, sexual skill, erotic surroundings—none of them counted beside this rarity. He was glad to have found it with her.
He eased his weight off her onto his elbows, and her eyes opened wide, dark hazel flecked with bewitching green, staring up at him. A dawning wonder began to cover the wild light of passion that had driven him on. He’d given her something new, and she liked it. He’d been right about that. There were unplumbed depths of sensuality in this woman, and he planned to release a few more of them before sunrise.
Without warning she smiled at him, dazzling him with her open happiness. And he smiled back, because against all the odds, he saw that she was his, that he had won.
He rolled over onto his back, to avoid crushing her to death, carrying her with him, still impaled. She lay on his chest and kissed his mouth before trailing her lips down his chest and fastening them to his nipple. He cupped her soft, pliant buttocks in his hands and squeezed before giving an experimental thrust that made her gasp.
“Isn’t that meant to shrink?” she asked without noticeable dissatisfaction.
“No. Not when it’s inside you.” Smiling, he swept his hands up over the curve of her buttocks and her back and stroked her face. “I think it pleased you,” he teased; yet he felt ridiculously like an inexperienced boy awaiting words of approval. It had been too long, much too long.
“You pleased me.” The words seemed to spill from her without permission. As soon as they were spoken, her teeth closed over her lip, as if embarrassed, and to cover it, she kissed his mouth.
Saloman had no objection to that. He began to make love to her again, but very slowly, forcing himself to far greater passivity than was in his nature. Fascinated, he wanted to see what she would do—whether she would falter or wait in shyness for him to resume control, or take her pleasure with quick, wicked secrecy. She didn’t.
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